February 27, 2013

People often ask if we’re in another Bay Area housing bubble. We usually reply that if you live in the Real Bay Area, you’ve been in Bubble 4.0 for at least a year! But not everyone is fortunate enough to live in the RBA. What if you live in the Real Gray Area, or the Corridor of Not Quite? What if you live somewhere that Is Not Special At All?

Do you know how to absolutely, positively demonstrate it’s a fact that we’re in another bubble? When places you know are never used in a sentence with “RBA” (unless with a negative) start showing up in these questions. When even Irvine is calling Bubble again, we have to really start taking better measurements. So, let’s head over to… Gilroy.

Beautiful Country Estates Home located on 15,000 sq. ft. lot with wonderful Hillviews. Very spacious floor plan with lots of usable land and a great location! Master bedroom located on 1st floor. Located in a cul-de-sac at the top of the hill. Shows beautifully. Don’t miss your opportunity to own this lovely home. Luigi Aprea and Christopher High School district. This is a regular sale!!

This listing is the perfect mix of mild disdain for the customer with admission that Gilroy is still The Land The New Bubble Forgot. Either than or this agent is still stuck in 2009: This is a regular sale!!

Sheesh, is MLS now charging brokers $10,000 per photo or something? What’s with this 3-in-one tiling display, when most listings manage to cough up nine photos? You would think a 3,000 sf house would have more than one inside room to show off.

Place doesn’t have much of a back yard, either. (Sorry, Streetview Not Available At This Location.)

November 23, 2012

If you haven’t already gotten up at 5 a.m. to start shopping for holiday bargains, you’ve still come to the right place! Thanksgiving is over, so get on your steel-toed cyber boots, the better to kick your fellow shoppers out of your way! Yes, it’s time for Burbed‘s Black Friday Sales, where we find the absolute rock-bottom in housing prices all around the Bay! And we’re opening an hour early just for you!

Here’s how Black Friday Sales will work this year. We’ll again feature the cheapest properties in each county all around the Bay Area, plus some of our favorite cities. But we won’t forget that our readers are sending in listings as well, so you just never know if each day will be a Sale Property or something else entirely. You’ll just have to tune in every day to find out.

Let’s begin our sales in Silicon Valley, because even Googlers like to bargain-hunt. Here we go, the absolutely cheapest house in all of Santa Clara County! Ready?

Good home conveniently located. This is a short sale. Please do not disturb occupants.

Whatever developer named this street sure has a twisted sense of humor, because it’s a short sale. There ought to be a Piggyback Lane here too. Be sure to check out the listing history, because this place has gone pending four different times in the last three years, plus it sold in 2000, yes, twelve years ago, for $247K.

What? You want a detached house? Okay, but this is your very last chance.

Another opportunity to own this 3 bedroom 1 bathroom single Family home located in San Jose. Very close to shopping centers, mall, and schools. Easy access to freeway 101. Sell is an “AS IS “ condition. Some dual Pane windows. Garage converted but permits unknown.

Oh, we’ve got a winner here! This one has everything! It’s also selling shortly, plus questionable permits and for sale as-is. The listing copy mentioned the “easy access” to 101, but they didn’t mention the just as easy access to Reid-Hillview Airport. Hope you like the sound of takeoffs and landings!

Magic Springs Drive. Also includes APN #810-03-004 for total of 4.36 acres. Beautiful and private creekside retreat among the giant redwoods and ferns. Over 20k put into bridge, foundation and engineered plans. No permits. Underground phone line and community spring fed water. Perfect for recreational getaway.

With all the recent chatter about “value in land only”, I thought this might make for an interesting, if not cautionary, tale.

This 4+acre property is nestled deep within a magical forest west of Gilroy. Since it has no street address, Redfin can’t map it, but the Santa Clara County GIS can (via APN 810-03-022).

The property last sold for $800K during the peak of the bubble years. Apparently, the seller planned to build a dream house there, investing over $20K towards improvements, but then gave up (the ogre/county wouldn’t permit it?).

With hopes dashed, the seller resigned to sell the property, but seemed conflicted on asking price (at one point asking twice what was paid for it). Currently, the seller has settled on a less fanciful price of $100K.

It just goes to show that RBA dreaming can only be truly realized in the RBA.

Two homes for the price of one(almost). Large two story home with 5 bedrooms and 2 baths. 2nd home was built in 2006 has modern amenities and has ally access. There is some work to be done, but this is the definition of sweat equity.

Oooh, as an aside, check out this nearby neighbor of the Gilroy house:

In particular, the aerial view. Take a nice old Victorian on a reasonably roomy lot, maybe spruce it up a bit… and then fill the entire backyard with another house. Brilliant! That’s down-south country-style livin’ for you.

Let’s have a look, then.

Wow. Just, wow. If only San Jose were as forward-looking as Gilroy and did away with that silly zoning code. Not only would we have in-law units in our back-yards, we’d have apartment houses in our back yards. Ka-ching!

But this is not the definition of sweat equity. This is the definition of “previous owner ran out of borrowed money.” Maybe the agent meant “the banker is breaking into a sweat over what happened to all its equity.”

September 21, 2011

Howdy, Guest Editor sonarrat here for a record-breaking second listing in the same month! Well, I grew up in the South County area, and I still have a soft spot for that sleepy, oft-forgotten area between the IBM exit on Bailey Ave and the shortcut to I-5. As I drive on the gently winding road through the dead, lifeless and empty Coyote Valley or take the even less scenic route along the deserted Monterey Highway by the town of Coyote (pop. 121), I can’t help but feel like I’m coming home. It’s that warm and fuzzy feeling that you can’t explain, especially to anyone who grew up anywhere else. If you’re coming to shop, though, like a lot of people, you want to keep going past the Harley-Davidson dealership in Morgan Hill and make a beeline for sunny Gilroy, the self-proclaimed “Garlic Capitol of the World.”

Short Sale AS-IS Zoned R3!! Plans approved for a Duplex. LARGE LOT 10,000 SQ!! Developers Dream Large Lot and Lots of Potential!! Converted Garage!! DO NOT DISTURB TENANTS!!! POTENTIAL!!! LARGE LOT 10K Plans for two homes. LOT HAS R-3 ZONING!!! SHORT SALE Will need approval from Lender on SHORT SALE AS-IS ZONING R3 R3 R3 R3 Please DO NOT DISTURB OCCUPANTS!!! Lots of POTENTIAL!!!!!!!

OMFG!!!!! So, um, what we have here is clearly a very excitable realtor. But the listing bears closer inspection. After all, during your interminable drive down here, you will see a sign that reminds you of why you made the trek.

Yes sir, you drive a little and save a lot in Gilroy. That’s why, for the price of this lovely updated condo in a convenient San Jose neighborhood with high-rated schools, you can have a scraper in a blighted neighborhood, the main selling point of which is that you have the possibility of casting it off the face of the Earth and starting over again from scratch. Not, mind you, that anyone is questioning the value in Gilroy. This is a lot of house for the money, and a lot of flat usable land, too. And as an added bonus, you get to hear the same train tracks Steve Jobs does – the Caltrain station is just a few short blocks away! Not to mention a number of cafes where you can get your daily coffee or 15. In a subtle attempt to emphasize how much house you’re getting, the realtor included 9 vibrant photographs. Let’s have a look:

That’s what I call value for your money. One exposure, nine reasons why you should call Gilroy home! But wait – there must be some reason why the realtor is so amped up that his finger twitched nine times on the “post” button and forgot entirely to mention this is actually a legal duplex, address 345-355 W 8th St. People just don’t get this excited normally. Oh, what’s this?

The fastest flip in the West has competition! Or else the realtor’s head exploded and no one has bothered to remove the listing. Either way, you win at 345 W 8th St in Gilroy! Drive a little, save a lot!

March 21, 2011

Zillow, the website that brought you the Zestimate, now has a brand-new feature to make fun of. We’ve all chuckled over how surprisingly off the Zestimate of a home’s value could be. Well, in the words of Mr. Family Guy, “You think that’s bad?”

Zillow has just introduced the Rent Zestimate. Yes, now we can compute the Zrent Zratio, using two estimates that may or may not have anything to do with reality! Let’s try it with a few houses previously featured on Burbed!

Here’s Friday’s house, the Tangrams Set with the High-Tech name. Once more, the Zestimate has no relation to real life, because if it did this place wouldn’t be sitting unclaimed for 113 days at $200K less than Zillow’s amazing valuation model’s prediction. To compute the Zrent Zratio, divide the Zestimate by the annual Rent Zestimate. For this house, $762,000 divided by ($3081 * 12) is 20.6, a number that says rent, don’t buy this house. (A number above 15 says rent, a number below 15 says buy.)

Although I think the answer is really don’t rent or buy this house, so let’s try again with something a little more desirable. So let’s stop and smell the roses.

Well, here’s a Zestimate a little more down to earth, as this Beautiful Specious Home is listed for $239,000. The Zrent Zratio is $217,500 / (1345 * 12) or 13.5. Buy! Buy! BUY!

And here’s our most recent run-in with MAWBUL CAWLUMS, it’s the Shrek House.

Ready? Oh oh, this place has a Zestimate about 30% of the asking price. I didn’t say 30% lower, I said it’s 30% of the asking price. I’m sure the FBs will be happy to set Zillow straight on this. And the Zrent Zratio is… $1,427,000 / (5587 * 12) = 21.3. Rent. Definitely rent.

Okay, now for grins, we’re going to compute the rent ratio using the wishing prices of all three homes, and Zillow’s Rent Zestimate.

March 15, 2011

Yet another terrific find came up in comments. Our thanks to Burbed reader Tuno for finding this… indescribable property, where thought, labor and love… couldn’t come up with a copywriter who could pass high school English.

Too bad this owner EXSPENDED so many YEARS with THOUGHT, LABOR and LOVE, because this property is the OWNERS VISION OF THE ULTIMATE EQUESTRIAN ESTATE. Perhaps it would be yours too?

As featured in the most recent Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, gallery tour of East Tracy. I think that means he doesn’t use very much paint. Like just one coat.

Maybe the exterior is by Kinkade, but this staircase at right was obviously designed by M.C. Escher. They could have used something like this in Inception to keep the assassins from finding them so fast. Also wouldn’t it be great to see a freight train knock down that statue?

Oh dear, is that… our first sighting of… that hallmark of CLASS and KULCHUCH? It’s hiding in the back left.

No I must have imagined it. Nothing but overdone French provincial dining set, probably not even included with the house.

YESSSSS!!!!!!! MAWBUL KAWLUMS!!!!! FTW!!!!

A sky you can’t believe in. They must have had Kinkade paint that too.

The horse facility is actually better than most of the houses we feature, although that really isn’t saying much. W 8STALL. But remember, this is on the ADJOINING 10AC PARCEL.

All set to put in a vineyard… as long as you can come up with about four million acre feet of water. And once you do, then you’ll have your RESORT LIKE OAIS.

December 6, 2010

DEALS DEALS DEALS! How would you like to buy an actual house – NOT A CONDO, NOT A TOWNHOUSE, NOT A HALF-SIZED LOT – for less than a hundred grand? Not convinced? What if this house was worth almost half a million dollars?

Whoops, looks like you’re a day too late! Well, that’s a Black Friday sale for you, quantities are limited to stock on hand! Then again, this $81 a square foot beauty has been on the market for almost half a year. Let’s see if it’s really going to be selling shortly.

Yes indeed, this house not only went for $490K in the glory days of 2005, it went for twice the current asking price twelve years ago! You know that rule about property doubling every ten years? That third bedroom must have a flux capacitor, because time is obviously running backwards at this address!

So sell some Apple stock, buy some Netscape and Sun, and move into this house, You’ll be looking younger, fitter and richer before you know it!

Great Starter Home. Large Corner Lot with access to Backyard from Street. Walking Distance to Neighborhood Park. Vaulted Ceiling and Fireplace in Living Room. Covered Patio off Kitchen. Conveniently located to shopping centers and Easy Access to Highway 101. Lots of Potential.

Even though we all know that Gilroy is no longer part of the Real Bay Area (if even the Bay Area itself!), Burbed doesn’t really feature it so often.

That said, Burbed reader Jackie did find this great starter home. Wow what a beaut!

To all you RE investors – is now the hot time to buy here? Will Gilroy be the next Foster City? What appreciation should we expect?

Disclaimer

The posts on this weblog are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and only represent the view of Burbed.com's editor. Comments are the views of commenters, not Burbed. If companies, properties, etc are mentioned on this blog, you should assume that I have a financial stake in them. Trust no one.